Small Change by Andrez Bergen

Roy Scherer and Suzie Miller run a detective agency. Though their clients are a little different from what you see in the usual Film Noir. They’re hunting the werewolves, resolving the hauntings, dealing with angry spirits and tripping over the odd vampire

Well, usually. It doesn’t always go to plan. Usually it doesn’t. But with copious alcohol and few resources, who else are you going to call?

I can see what this book is trying to be. It’s trying to be a zany, funny collection of irreverent short stories, taking the grittiness of so many hunter stories we have out there and throwing in a heavy dose of the silly, sarcasm and general hilarity to make it a whole new thing. Still a little dark, with the heavy drinking protagonists and more than a few jokes, but comedic and silly – the slightly inept hunters flailing through a series of encounters with monsters and leaving (sort of) success and hilarity in their wake

I’ve seen this attempted before in other books – and I’ve utterly loved it. The horror and the humour, the grittiness and the silliness it can mesh so well and has literally created some of my favourite stories.

But… in this case it didn’t really achieve that. Mainly because I simply didn’t find it funny enough. I mean it was amusing and had moments of laughter, but there were nuggets within a story that as a bit meh. The thing is, without the hilarious quips and fun, this kind of story falls flat because there’s not much else there really to sell it

There is a story behind there. The origin story of Roy and him working for Miller, Suzie‘s father who then joined the firm. The two of them coming together, him resenting her, grudgingly starting to respect her and them moving their way down to romanceville. And I really loved how Suzie went from naive ingénue harder than Roy by the end. But this plot line and the world (which is more a series of random encounters than a world) aren’t really there for their own sake. I don’t think the author intends me to be super invested in these characters any more than I’m supposed to be super invested in characters from a comedy sketch. Nor do I think I’m meant to marvel at the world. These characters and this world is supposed to provide a good framework, a decent backlot, against which the hilarity can happen. But there isn’t enough hilarity so I’m left looking at the backlot a bit too much which is… fine, I guess. I mean, it’s not bad but not enough to sell it on its own.

Etiquette of Exiles (Senyaza #3.5) by Chrysoula Tzavelas

The Senyaza series has a very rich and detailed world with a huge number of different and complicated forces attached. We have the fae of various courts all with their own agendas. We have kaiju, we have angels, we have half-angels, we have beings I can’t even begin to label. On top of that the whole sense of the other world is one that is so alien, so creepy and spooky and surreal that it takes a lot of thought

Then we have the books to date each of which manages to cover so much of this world because every last book has a different story and a different focus with a different protagonist and segment of the world.

That means in 3 books we have had a huge cast of characters, a vast world and a whole lot of development and complexity. Which is what I love so much about this series

Except… this is an issue for me with the short story anthology, exacerbated by me not having read the books, especially the earlier books, for some time. I don’t recognise enough of the characters in the early short stories to really understand what is happening or what is relevant. I don’t mean they’re bad stories – I really liked the feel of Other Reasons – for example. In fact, not only did I love it I was desperate for more – because it felt like I had missed most of the story and came in half way. I wanted to know the rest of this story because there wasn’t enough there for it to stand alone for me. I feel much the same for Wicked Stepself, I really like this story (despite the second person format which I really hate) – a wonderful, powerful surreal session and a really powerful core for a whole new story which I really really want to follow more. But I’m just not sure how this relates to the rest of the series - can feel it, but with my fuzzy memory it feels like a new story in this world. One I really really want to read – but not one I find connected to what is currently there.

Stainless was much better at standing alone. A beautiful, surreal story of a woman in a sexist society, being abandoned and shamed for having a child – finding strength and purpose in a really creepy and terrifying setting. Surreal, powerful – but slightly disconnected from the rest of the book, and the series.  It felt like something completely separate.

I think the same can be said for Winter War – again I have to stress I liked this story and it did add so much to the surreal nature of the world and a beautiful snippet into this wild and wonderful world… but not exactly connected to anything else. I say the same about Her Daughter, Pinned to the Sky again awesomely shows off the world, the surreal nature, the amazing powers being raised. Same statement again with the Endless Silence of Forgotten Things and the Far City Cheer Squad.

Black Dog Short Series by Rachel Neumeier

I’m not going to begin with my usual “I don’t like short stories because reasons” disclaimer, because I really don’t think I applies here

This is an excellent short book with three separate stories in it. They’re all very compact, relatively simple stories but, above all to me, every last one of them is really useful and even necessary to the broader plot.

The first story, Christmas Shopping, addresses one of my underlying concerns of the story – the relationship between Keziah and Natividad. These two are the most prominent by far (and, to a degree, the only appreciable) female characters in the series – it is a very male dominated series, especially in major roles even if Natividad is usually the protagonist. Few prominent female characters and those female characters hating each other with the fiery passion of a thousand exploding suns is, alas, a powerful trope

So this story of Keziah and Natividad spending time together is an excellent story. They don’t like each other a great deal, certainly – but this is a rift brought about form vastly different experiences, tastes and lives. Them being together in this story both excellently showcases this while, at the same time, having them build more and more connections, more understanding and approaching, if not friendship, then perhaps mutual respect. It’s all nicely capped with something Keziah taunted Natividad about becoming a joke between them

It also comes with a nice bit of world building shouting back to the major war that defines this series. In all, an excellent story – though I do have a discomfort with how very awed Natividad is of towns and cities. Sometimes her POV gives the impression that Mexico has no great cities and isn’t very sophisticated.

The second Story, Library Work, also brings some really necessary elements to the series. In this case we get to see a lot more of Miguel, Natividad’s human twin brother who is often out on a limb in the world dominated by Black Dogs and magical Pure and vampires. This book helped emphasise his strength – he’s smart, he’s cunning, he’s patient and he is excellently skilled in not only navigating around the dangerous Black Dogs and their uncertain tempers – but also in outright manipulating them for his own well being.

Falling in Love with Hominids by Nalo Hopkinson

Ok, standard disclaimer that I seem to have to write every time I review a collection of short stories – I don’t particularly like them. I am not a fan of short stories, I’m not fan of stand alone stories that aren’t part of a larger series and I’m not a fan of collections of stories that aren’t related to each other

Now, this is a collection of short stories, none of them are from series, and none of them are related to each other. There’s also 19 short stories in this book. I tend to lose interest in any collections of stories that go over 10. I don’t think there’s even really a uniting theme – they’re all by the same author and they’re all speculative fiction, but that’s about it

In other words, I started this book trying very much to like it because I’d heard good things – but fearing that I was going to hate it simply because of my own dislike of short stories.

Thankfully, I loved it. Most of it anyway

It started really well with The Easthound. I loved how this really creepy story of a dystopia led by children really managed to pack a lot of world building in through without any real infodumping – the lack of adults, the fear of growing up, literally starving themselves so they wouldn’t age, the horror of being children with no adults to look after them and how that permeates how they react to the world. They’re children trying to survive – and the way they look at the world is childlike, almost a terrifying game of survival.

I think this sense of the creepy works really well in many of the stories – Old Habits. It’s take on ghosts and what they hunger for is chilling and a truly terrifying view of a horrific afterlife without being s dramatic and gory as so many others

The Smile on My Face  was amazing fun and an awesome look at body issues and self-worth with a dash of mythology and a whole lot of getting behind someone and cheering her – and a great scene of battling against rape and sexual assault without graphic depiction of victimisation – it’ strong and awesome all through. I especially like how, despite their being a Mean Girl, Gilla still reaches out to her in clear solidarity (even if it is also an excellent snide put down) because even a Mean Girl would need someone to believe her if she were a victim. On the other end of the scale, Emily Breakfast was also a fun little story (with a large number of LGBT characters and my only brief issue is the only real characterisation was distinctly sexual in nature) that wasn’t as creepy or intimidating as some, but who can be against dragon chickens? More thoughtful was Shift which not only completely took a Shakespearean story and brought out a whole new idea from it – but then had several shifts and complexities that made this story (and it’s apparent antagonists) much much more fun than I imagined and, again, very thoughtful.

Led Astray by Kelley Armstrong

This is a collection of short stories by Kelley Armstrong, drawing upon her various worlds as well as several stand alones.

There are a lot of stories that draw from Kelley Armstrong’s various world series – and some of these I haven’t read. For me this was particularly a problem for the short stories based on the Cainsville series since I hadn’t read them. In some ways I think the order of the stories was off, if Devil May Care had come first rather than last, the world would have been much more explained and developed and, with that, I would have had more investment and understanding when reading The Screams of Dragons, Gabriel’s Gargoyles and The Hunt. But, if I had read Devil May Care       first, I don’t think the same sense of mystery and alienness would have pervaded these books.

Thematically and in terms of tone all of these are very good at invoke the other, the very otherworldy feel of the fae but all with a strong sense of subtlety. They are unseen and mysterious and it’s all a lot of look-out-the-corner-of-your-eye-or-you’ll miss it etherealness that really real worked. They were creepy, they were low key, they were subtle and they were about normal or seemingly normal people caught up in this mysterious place with its mysterious people who are just ever-so-slightly off. I think that wouldn’t have carried the same weight if I’d read Devil May Care first even though I enjoyed it more, since that book is very up front and clear about what Cainsville is and why. It would have destroyed the mystery and the eeriness. I do think I am missing out a lot by not recognising any of these characters and not appreciating any new angles it my bring

I also haven’t reads the Darkes Powers/Darkness Rising universe and I’m now both eager to read them and quite frustrated by having read this first.  Kat and Branded both seem to take familiar themes from The Otherworld universe but the world building goes in a very different direction – with the same supernatural creatures I know so well eventually leading to a complex and rich dystopia. In Kat we see the beginnings of this and Branded takes the extreme several years, perhaps centuries, afterwards. I’m a little frustrated in fact because I think I’d love to read this series but now I know where it’s heading I think I will miss much of the suspense of the characters facing the pending dystopia. I loved both stories not just for the world setting but also for the characters with Kat we saw strong female friendships, family and dedication and Branded showed a level of cunning and ruthlessness from a female protagonist that was absolutely applause worthy. It’s a terrible, dark, lethal world – and she does what she must to survive and thrive in excellent, terrifying fashion.

The main reason I was interested in this book was for those stories set in the Otherworld universe – I’ve read them all, I love this series and miss it now it was over, so it was nice to hark back to it. Though I have to say, in some ways, they clashed badly with the other stories in this book. The other stories have desperate, abused children, alien, cruel and downright creepy fae, several brutal dystopias and some downright disturbing standalones. Then we have the Otherworld stories which are a bit silly and great fun. I like them, but they’re theme bombs and derail the overall feel of the book

Shifting Shadows (Mercy Thompson #8.5 - short stories) by Patricia Briggs

Collections of short stories from the same author – and certainly set in the same world – like this one can be very hit and miss. After all, a lot of authors write short stories that are designed to go into mixed anthologies to draw in new readers who have never come across their world – when you put them into a book together that is then aimed at readers of the series they can feel very unnecessary, like they add nothing and are generally just filler in the longer series.

This one, I think, rather wonderfully avoids that. Most of these short stories do an excellent job of expanding on elements of the Mercy Thompson/Alpha & Omega world and delving into more detail. This is a great thing for a series that has gone on as long as this has, because there are always going to be gaps – there should always be moments where someone’s story wasn’t explored or a concept wasn’t expanded upon because it simply wasn’t relevant to the main plot – but that doesn’t mean that they wouldn’t still add to the world, flesh out a lot of side characters and generally add a lot of meat even if they didn’t quite fit.

So we have Silver that looks at the history of Bran and Samuel before they became werewolves, telling us about Bran’s with mother who enslaved them both – something which had been referred to in past books without ever really expanding upon it. It also brings in Samuel’s connection with Arianna; again I knew Samuel and Arianna had a history but I was never really aware of it’s depth or how far back it went. This story alone took a huge amount (while simultaneously reminding us just how very dangerous the fae are).

Roses in Winter adds some more flesh to Asil’s character – his compassion, his gentle hobbies and his ongoing struggle with the wolf due to his extreme age; and through that we see the almost inevitable struggle every werewolf goes through as they get older as well as the conflict that new wolves face trying to hold onto control and the sadly necessary executions of new wolves who fail to gain that control. It’s a great insight not just into Asil but also into how hard it is for Bran to lead, and a look at werewolf control beyond “rawr, I am wolf, cower before me, rawr!”

In Red, With Pearls brings some desperate characterisation to Kyle and Warren which has been desperately needed in the series. The only gay characters, they are often background in Mercy and Adam’s story and, unlike just about every other member of the werewolf pack and assorted associates, they’re the most affable. That doesn’t sound like a bad thing – but in a story where just about everyone throws up some problems, the gay characters being the mellow “we’ll go along with whatever you want, straight folks” has shades of the GBF, even the foreward of this story notes that Mercy considers Warren the gentlest werewolf she’d met. This story was essential to show more of these characters beyond how they appear when Mercy needs them or how they add to Mercy’s life – to try and claw back some sense of them as more than Mercy’s entourage and give them some of their own character and plot lines which I definitely like. I also like the further delving into the witch world building and the idea of the Pack witch – nearly every pack has a witch on call, but that doesn’t mean the witch is a nice person.

Tales of the Hidden World by Simon r Green

This short story collection has an excellent, coherent, link between the best stories in the book (something that many collections miss) – they’re all extremely, incredibly eerie. There’s a sense of darkness, of creepiness that permeates every story here. Not otherness – speculative fiction lends itself to otherness and weirdness – but crawl down your spine creepiness. For most of them

Then there’s a few extra stories slotted in there which just feel more questionable

There is a theme of death that carries through many of these stories – the nature and fear of death in particular and even a question of whether death is worse than life. A Question of Solace takes an old man who has lived an exciting and productive life, finally slowing down and losing his touch but not realising it; his memories, his doubts, his guilt over his legacy all combine to be a beautiful, powerful and moving goodbye scene for him – a time when death is certainly not to be feared or grieved, but a life celebrated. Dorothy Dreams is a powerful story of Dorothy from Oz growing old, being forgotten, neglected in her old age, finally getting to return to Oz. It’s a beautiful interpretation of that old story – and so many other stories – and another story that celebrates death even as life is seen as something painful to endure.

Find Heaven and Hell In the Smallest Things takes it to the next level, with Paul, the protagonist, enduring a living hell after his life was “saved” after a terrible accident; saved but now doomed to work the rest of his days imprisoned in a mechanical suit, enduring horrendous conditions to serve the government with the incomplete memory of his dead wife in the suits computer for company – a wife who cannot remember the last 3 years of their marriage or that it had fallen apart before her death. The excellent writing really does bring home a fate worse than death and any release as a relief.

Down and Out in Deadtown also follows the theme of death but to a far more cutting degree – the dead rises in a zombie horde… that doesn’t hunger. They’re dead… but moving. Not moving much or doing anything – they’re just… there. And people are happy until they realise the returned dead aren’t who they want them to be so they’re shuffled away and forgotten, rendered invisible; and all of this is told through the eyes of a homeless man – shuffled away and forgotten, rendered invisible. The comparisons and insight is razor sharp and very very true.

Many of these stories make me want to read more in the universe – A Question of Solace certainly will have me looking up the rest of the Drood series – supernatural James Bond’s trying to deal with world wide supernatural and sci-fi problems, with a side order of moral quandaries as they have to do terrible things for the “greater good”? Sign me up for that – exciting, well written and full of surprising depth and characterisation, I’m sold. I’d already read Street Wizard in another anthology and what I said then still applies. It’s All About The Rendering is probably the only story in this book that isn’t a little dark in some way – it’s a surprising break among the deep, dark, grittiness, hard choices, and uplifting death: a fun, whacky story of a house on the border between normality and wonder. And I really want to read more. It does seem completely out of place in the book, however.

This Strange Way of Dying by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

This book is a collection of short stories and it’s rather unlike any I’ve read before.

In some ways I don’t think “stories” is the correct way to refer to these entries. None of them really conclude or have any real ending, most of them only have a little backstory but not one that goes back very far. Even plot is somewhat absent in most of them. What they are more are vignettes. Or photographs in literary form. Each story concentrates on creating a theme and atmosphere and they all do it incredibly well. They’re not meant to tell someone’s story, they’re not meant to advance a plot or even tell a story. They’re there to give us a snap shot into an event or part of an event, a glance into a person or creature’s life, a brief look at a legend or myth or superstition or fear and give us the full impact of that. I don’t think it’s about telling a story, it’s about artistically presenting an image, capturing a moment and portraying a theme, an emotion and a deep, unsettling darkness that permeates each and every one of these stories

And they are all very very good at that. Every story has the best atmosphere. It is creepy with a capital CREEP. What is alien is alien and the settings around Mexico and especially in Mexico City are really powerful. You get an excellent sense of time and place even though they’re only thumbnails in short stories, they’re very elegantly described – not overwritten but not sparse and very much aware that the atmosphere is vital for these stories.

All but one of these stories are set in Mexico and there’s a really good sense of the location in them. Culture, food, location beliefs are all really well mixed and presented into the stories as a natural part of them. There’s no sense of someone forcing inserts or clumsiness or “tour guide” elements where someone really wants you to look at the setting. It’s there, it’s always there, but it’s always there naturally. But more than just place and culture, many of these stories also bring in history, which is fascinating all of itself since so much of this history is so little known or studied outside Mexico. It certainly prompted me to do some reading to find the larger context that created these beautiful, eerie scenes.

And, of course, many of the stories are about Mexican folklore, mythology, beliefs and superstitions which are other elements that are rarely seen in the genre (or, if they are seen, it’s because a book or show has wanted to mine some foreign cultures for some “exotic” woo-woo without any backing). Because of the way these stories are written, the folklore fits in excellently and kept me fascinated and interested for a long time.

But, it has to be said, not for the whole book. I read this book from cover to cover in one sitting and I don’t think that’s ideal with this anthology. Because each story is more a setting capture/snapshot without a strong reliance on plot, by the end of the book I was losing interest. Kind of like going through a photo album of beautiful scenery – you can gasp at the beauty of it all, but eventually you’re going say “oh. Yay. Another mountain. Yes. Mountainous.”

Kabu-Kabu by Nnedi Okorafor

This book is a collection of short stories so I cannot really write a synopsis other than to say most of them are led by women, who are African or of African descent , all of them are powerful and all are set in beautiful, amazing rich worlds – or our own world with some excellent fantastic twists.

And it’s huge. In fact, it felt far huger reading it than I seemed when I first saw how big it was. There are the best part of 20 stories there – they’re not all extremely long but by the end I was beginning to feel a little fatigued. It wasn’t that they were boring or bad or dull stories – it’s just that after story 16 my brain did kind of ask me “what, it’s STILL story time?!”

This is not a criticism – this is advice. Read this book, but don’t try to tackle it all in one sitting.

Part of the reason for that is this is a book that absolutely denies any kind of skimming or lazy reading. This book is meaty. This book is complex. Many of these stories tackle big, weighty issues in stark terms. There are many different issues concerning racism, Black Americans in Nigeria and conflict with Nigerians, colonialism, exploitation of Nigeria by western powers and industry, of arrogant foreigners assuming they can step into Africa however they wish. Issues  of shaming people for their natural hair, genocide, dehumanisation, degrading beliefs as “superstition”, scapegoating population, scapegoating religion, stereotyping – both religious and racial and a whole lot of challenges of assumptions. We have societies where fat women are considered the epitome of beauty or where a veiled Muslim woman is a mechanic working in her mother’s shop.

This book is stark. I don’t mean grim-dark with lots of excess awfulness everywhere in an attempt to be gritty – but stark. It’s unflinching. It both challenges that idea that Africa in general and Nigeria in particular is some grim, desperate place (even in the dystopian stories presented – which in themselves are unique simply for being African dystopians) while at the same time not flinching away from actual problems and creating some kind of unicorn inhabited utopia.  It’s stark – it looks at the whole, the bad things depicted are not presented as uniquely African or Nigerian, they’re not sugar coated and they’re not exaggerated – but they are examined and exposed and they demand you think.

All the worlds are African-centric (primarily Nigerian), from the Nigerian-American lawyer catching the Kabu in Chicago and running into all kinds of shenanigans on the way, through to the stories set in post-apocalyptic Sudan. The stories contain a lot of African beliefs, mythology, folklore and stories bringing a lot of stories we just never see in so much of Urban Fantasy –or any genre for that matter – making them extremely unique. But it’s not just the monsters and magic that are different, there is a true sense of time and place throughout the stories with the surroundings and the food (especially the food which always takes a strong place in each story).

After Expenses (Slayer of Evil (Prices Negotiable)) by Andrew Moczulski

Eric Margrave is a Monster Hunter ($200 per hour for standard jobs, $250 for non-standard, $300 for Ichor-covered slimy tentacle beasts plus expenses. And he doesn’t do demons, dragons, liches, demon-dragons, no dragon-liches, no demon-dragon-liches and absolutely no sentient bread). He’s one of the best in the business. And he can go on a five hour tangent if someone mentions the word “gelatin.”

After picking up Lydia (a 19^th century society lady), a Guardian spirit in a confusing haunting in one of his safe houses and new base of operations, Eric is ready to hit the road to help those in need (so long as they can pay. And if they can’t pay, he reminds you that the other victims of the monster probably left some stuff behind you can loot – hint hint), from angry ghosts, to furious nature spirits, werewolves, zombie armies, evil witches and annoying gremlins, Eric’s seen it all and is more than capable of bring it down. With Lydia to help and point out the many many many things he does wrong.

And he can look cool while doing it. Always essential.

This book is a series of short stories. And when I reached the end I was deeply disappointed that there wasn’t more. And this is from someone who doesn’t like short stories. I generally find they lack meta, they lack overarching epicness and they’re just not long enough to develop the characters and the themes and the story.

This collection worked because the themes and characters continue throughout all the short stories – and they’re really well maintained. You can tell that they were written at different times and their voices and personalities definitely develop from the first to the last as the author finds his writing style, but it is really well maintained and works to make the book feel like one, solid, continued work rather than a series of short stories.

It doesn’t have an epic overarching story – but it doesn’t need one. That’s not what this book is about. This is about the often dangerous, often exciting, usually weird and complicated life of a monster hunter. There are no epic overarching plots because usually hunting the monsters doesn’t involve that – he shows up, finds the gribbly thing, whatever it is, kills the gribbly thing, collects his fee and goes home. There’s no need to have a big overarching plot because that’s not what the monsters do. Most of them are happy to terrorise a local village without bringing an apocalypse to the whole world.

So what fills the gap, how does it still work? Firstly, the stories themselves are original and fun. The take on the ghosts (feeding on fear and getting more dangerous), various nature spirits, werewolves, demons et al is original and interesting with some immensely fun twists. Like werewolves not being considered a threat because EVERYONE knows how to kill a werewolf! Or Eric’s utter contempt for zombie apocalypses and how little chance they’d have to really take over the nation. Or his very original take on killing zombies. Each story is novel enough, different enough and twisty enough not to need an overarching plot to keep it interesting – they’re all interesting in their own right.

What also works are the characters. Eric and Lydia. Individually they’re excellent – Eric is one of the funniest, most ridiculous, zany, more than a little eccentric but still lethal monster hunters you could ever hope to read. He’s such immense fun, takes nothing seriously while, at the same time, never losing that sense of just how dangerous he is. In fact, his being so blasé is worked well into showing just how dangerous the man is – he’s seen most of it before, he’s confident in his ability to kill things, he can afford to have fun at it. He can afford to be a little silly. And… when it’s really necessary, all that fun and joy and silliness will just fall away and that lethal steel will peek out, reminding you that this man is, at the root, a contract killer with lethal skills. He doesn’t have to show them off, because he’s that good.

Lydia frequently asks him if he’s quite sane – and I think part of his portrayal is that Eric isn’t, not entirely. We’ve seen his childhood heavily hinted at in one of the short stories, we’ve had frequent references to his past experiences as a hunter, fighting for his life against everything he can including demons (which is why he won’t fight them any more) and his general lonely, unsupported existence all adds up to be a strong indication that he isn’t exactly neuro-typical any more. But all of this is shown rather than told, through both his erratic behaviour and showing the experiences that we would expect to lead Eric to this state. It doesn’t need long speeches of his pain, his terrible experiences or how it has damaged him – the end result is shown through

Does it work? Usually. Sometimes I think it falls flat. Eric goes from being hilariously eccentric to a desperate clown who is trying too hard. It gets too contrived, too convoluted, too childish to work and the suspension of disbelief shatters. It happens more towards the beginning of the book than the end and I suspect it is the author getting used to Eric’s voice and developing him as a character, but even in the last story there are moments when Eric just pushes a little too far to be believable. I think it’s an issue that is getting better and I hope in future books Eric will stay on this side of the believable.

Review: El Mosaico: Scarred Souls, by Michael Panush

Clayton Cane was not born, he was created. During the American Civil War, in a plantation house a scientist used the darkest of arts to try and create a new source of soldiers for the beleaguered south by stitching together and animating the corpses of the fallen. He was destroyed before he could produce more than one – but Clayton Cane, with the memories of dozens, if not hundreds, of soldiers, was born.

He is now a bounty hunter. Reviled by most because of his heavily scarred appearance, he is exceptionally good at his job, hunting and killing people and monsters no matter what arcane arts they practice

But he is more than just a hunter and more than a monster, as we follow Caine through his adventures that take him across the United States and far beyond, there is definitely more man than monster to him. A man that can be moved by compassion, a man that won’t tolerate the victimisation of the innocent – and a man who is becoming tired of the trials of his life.

I really like Clayton Cane as a protagonist. His monstrosity of both creation and appearance often separates him from humanity. A separation that is only increased by his job – bounty hunter, killer for hire – and his extreme skill at it. And he is good at his job and works to be this cold hearted, ruthless gun-for-hire. Yet he is human, he has a heart of cold, a conscience and a powerful sense of compassion that constantly drives him to help those who deserve it. His ruthlessly efficient dispatching of the guilty instantly melts when facing the innocent. Together it not only creates an awesomely complex character but also a character with a lot of pain, especially in the later stories where Cane is, more clearly, feeling the burden of living the life he does.  Just by showing these conflicting sides and the constant rejection he faces, we have a far greater sense of his pain than we would have got from pages and pages of angsty whining.

The setting was also intriguing because it was so wide. We have the character and we have the time period – in the 19^th century. But Cane can be called not only across the United States and Mexico, but to London and Egypt as well – he roams to follow his work ensuring a great diversity of settings

I have said it before and I’ll, no doubt, say it again – I don’t like short stories. I find they’re usually very badly rushed to cram everything in, contain info-dumping, have little character development and either needed to be part of a greater story or didn’t need to exist at all. Which is why I was quite pleased to read this book because all the short stories in it did it right. Each story carefully contained, there were no loose threads and they were clearly more than prologues for a greater series or novel. They didn’t contain any irrelevant information, they didn’t pad and they didn’t rush. They’re wonderful little stories and they all stand on their own – with stories like these I could grow to like the short story format.

The problem is that I am nearly sure that each of these stories did stand on their own in separate publications. In these separate books, they would have been excellent. But they don’t work nearly so well in one book.

Firstly there is a lot of recapping of Cane’s creation. Every short story has it, sometimes in a rather convoluted manner, and by the 5^th story it’s starting to look a little ridiculous. The stories all had a similar structure as well: Cane is hired to face a threat. He does some minimal investigating (usually he’s pointed straight at the enemy), then he faces a horde of monsters – cultists, undead, jotun, whatever – then he wins. This isn’t a vague summary of one of these eight short stories, this is a summary of all of them. While there were certainly different elements to each story, I still felt vaguely like I was reading the same story 8 times. Even the writing in the fight scenes is very similar. The book just felt very repetitive.

We also had some repetition of powerful themes – the most common of which being the humanity of Cane compared to the monstrosity of the people he was facing. From the first story with Cane, Alligator men and Loup-Garou all being more human than the rich, racist plantation owner to Dead Man’s Band and Monster Men of Malachite Flats where Cane refuses to accept being a novelty to people who will offer him pretend respect in exchange for his service.  They’re excellent themes of humanity and judging based on appearance.

Similarly Red Blades in Whitechapel, Ghost Dances and Tomb of Kings say a lot about not trusting those in power just because they’re in power – and “civilised” authority doesn’t necessarily mean good or decent people. We have themes of heroism in Monster Men of Malachite Flats, Tarantula and Valiant Dead with both the cost and burden of it – as well as the rewards.

I love all of these themes and I think they are done excellently well conveying messages without being preachy and truly fleshing them out with some great characters. But, again, we have the repetition, the same message told repeatedly because these short stories were never intended to be together.

Inclusionwise, these short stories have 3 women in it – but 2 are capable, handle themselves better than any of the other side characters in a crisis. They are more than just weapons, having ties –or severed ties – to family that matter to them. They’re not perfect or amazing – they’re human and competent and they’re not damsels to protect. The third is a victim to protect – a pregnant Black woman giving birth who is being hunted, I did rather feel the protection and value of her applied as much or more to the child than she herself.

We have a number of POC who are dismissed with slurs and contempt of the time – but that is repeatedly challenged. The Arabic and Black “savages” in Tomb of Kings are far more informed and sensible than the white British lord. The Lakota man in Ghost Dance is far more human and morale than the brutal, evil cavalry trying to hunt him down. These are just some of many instances where were have the bigotry against POC – but the bigots are evil, cruel, savage and callous while the POC are good, human, honourable and kind.

There are no GBLT people in these stories.

In the end, I liked this book. It was interesting, had some great stories, a really intriguing protagonist, some excellent themes and was generally really well written, well paced and a whole lot of fun. But the repetitiveness means that towards the end of the book I was rapidly beginning to lose interest.

 A copy of this book was provided by Netgalley

Side Jobs by Jim Butcher, Short Story collection from the Dresden Files

I approached Side Jobs with a degree of caution and a firm determination not to let my own biases sway me. See, I don't like short stories. I don't. I don't even like stand alone novels all that much. I like great big epic series with huge great meta plots and development and drama and on the edge of your seat excitement.

And while all those are possible within the confines of a short story, they're usually not there. I was especially leery of reading a Harry Dresden short story simply because the best thing about these books is the epic within. I don't think I've read an author that can match Butcher for the epic – but nor do I think you can build up to good epic in a short story.

And there was some mixed quality here. The stories were from every period in the series and while most of them were a hit (above and beyond what I expected), some missed badly. Restoration of Faith was pretty dull and clumsy and the second story Vignette isn't even a story. I actually wasn't too fond of many of the short stories that had Harry as a main protagonist because they kind of involved Harry just, well, doing what we've seen him do throughout the books but generally a bit more casually because this is his daily bread, as it were. And while it's nice to see his daily bread, it's not exactly a revelation – and with a good maybe 7 out of 11 of the stories being these daily bread style tales? None of them really adding development to the world, story or characters?

I think I'd have greatly enjoyed them in anthologies of other books where they were originally – if I was new to the Dresden Files they'd give me a sense of the world and intrigued me more – but put together we just get a series of “and this is a day in the life of Harry. And this is another day in the life of Harry” stories.